1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to medical apparatus and methods. More particularly, the present invention relates to eyedropper construction and methods for using eyedroppers to deliver drops to the inner corner of a patient's eye.
Many if not most people find dispensing eye drops into their own eyes to be an uncomfortable procedure. Many people blink or shake as the drops are released from the conventional eyedropper, often leading to incomplete delivery of the irrigant lubricant or medication.
Despite many attempts to provide improved systems, the most common technique for self-dispensation of eye drops remains use of a dropper bottle. The patient turns his or her eyes upwardly, locates a dispensing nozzle of the dropper over the eye, and squeezes the bottle to dispense the drop. Sometimes this works. Sometimes this doesn't work.
Prior attempts at improving eyedroppers and systems are almost too numerous to mention. Of particular interest to the present invention, a variety of eye drop dispensing guides or positioners have been developed. For the most part, these improved guides or dispensers have been attempts to stabilize and/or position the dispensing nozzle of the dropper or dropper bottle at some predetermined position over the eye. In some cases, the guides or positioners have further included means for holding the eyelid open in an attempt to assure that the drop actually enters the eye.
While potentially being helpful, the location of the dropper or dropper bottle over the eye still can be disturbing or even daunting to the patient. Moreover, most of these guides or positioners have been threatening, somewhat uncomfortable, cumbersome, unaesthetic, and awkward to use.
For these reasons, it would be desirable to provide additional and improved devices and apparatus for accurately and successfully dispensing drops into a patient's eyes. In particular, it would be desirable if the apparatus and systems were easy to use, did not require placement of the dispensing bottle or dropper directly over an eye, and could provide accurate and reproducible delivery of a drop to a particular area of the eye, more particularly the inner corner (medial canthus) of the eye. At least some of these objectives will be met by the invention as described and claimed hereinbelow.
2. Description of the Background Art
Patents describing eyedroppers and other devices for directing drops into eyes include U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,595,970; 6,325,784; 6,319,240; 5,713,495; 5,665,079; 5,059,188; 4,973,322; 4,960,407; 4,685,906; 4,468,103; 4,257,417; 4,085,750; and 3,934,590. See also published application US 2002/0016576 and design patents D463,550; D457,952; and D369,211. The full disclosures of each of these patents and applications are incorporated herein by reference.